Adams 14 investigation finds board member violated policy by helping his wife substitute teach

Former Adams 14 board member Bill Hyde violated district policy by regularly assuming the role of substitute teacher with his wife and disciplining students, a district investigation has found.

The investigation was prompted by an incident in January when the Adams County Sheriff’s Office responded to Monaco Elementary after a student complained of being hurt when Hyde grabbed him by the arm to move him. The Adams 14 school board banned Hyde from classrooms during the investigation, and Hyde resigned from the board last week.

Bill Hyde. (Courtesy of Adams 14)

The Sheriff’s Office did not pursue criminal charges. The district investigation focused on district policy and liability.

The final report was completed Feb. 24 and made public Friday afternoon after a special board meeting Thursday.

“Dr. Hyde’s assumption of a teacher’s role when he joins his wife while she is engaged as a substitute teacher intentionally interferes with teaching and violates district policy pertaining to qualifications of a registered substitute,” the report states.

Hyde’s wife, Pam Hyde, is a licensed substitute teacher, but he is not. The report also found that although the January incident at Monaco prompted the investigation, other people had previously raised concerns about Hyde being in classrooms while his wife was substitute teaching. The investigation did not produce a count of how many times Hyde had visited his wife’s classrooms, but investigators said that “from time to time” as Hyde puts it, is an “understatement.”

Concerns were raised last year after Hyde wrote in a blog post about being in a classroom at Rose Hill with his wife and spending the entire time “trying to corral” a student with special needs who was being disruptive, “while my wife worked with the rest of the class.” Timio Archuleta, the board president at the time, asked Hyde not to interfere in classrooms with his wife.

Just last month, when describing the Monaco incident, Hyde wrote in his blog how he and his wife continue to share duties while she substitute teaches.

“Each of us has decades of experience in education at all levels and under many different conditions,” Hyde wrote on his blog. “The benefit of having two of us in the same classroom is tremendous because it allows us to split the class and concentrate more intently on a smaller group of kids or to have one of us work with off-task students while the other works with the balance of the class.”

According to the report, the mother of the student involved in the January incident “most clearly articulated that Dr. Hyde should never be in a classroom with children again.”

The investigator wrote in the report that when talking with the couple, Pam Hyde “interjected that Dr. Hyde is on the school board and ‘can do whatever he wants.’”

The investigator, however, found that assertion is not the case. Because Hyde’s wife assumes the responsibilities of a classroom teacher when substituting, the investigation also found that she violated district policy by allowing her husband to share the responsibility without having the authority to grant it to him.

The district has not responded to questions about whether it will allow Pam Hyde to continue substitute teaching.

Adams 14, meanwhile, will start taking applications for Hyde’s replacement on the board later this week, with the goal of doing interviews and selecting a replacement on April 23.

Read the full findings below.